From the outside, a small loan offer inside a food delivery app. Behind it is a company that provides lending infrastructure to some of Europe's biggest food and mobility apps, without showing its own name.
The founders, Max Schertel and Alexander Talkanitsa, met at N26 [6]. In 2021 they started with a product that financed trades between users of marketplaces [6]. Today the same infrastructure gives cash advances to restaurants on food delivery apps. Since October 2026, fleet owners working on Bolt can also buy their cars in instalments through finmid [7].
What stopped us was this. A lender picks the right niche, builds a very strong channel for handing out loans, and grows very fast because of it. The financing offers it has made since launch passed €4 billion, and 85% of the businesses that borrow come back for more [16].
Where do you think the money comes from?
A pizzeria's first loan
Let's explain the system with an example. Picture a pizzeria that sells on Wolt. The numbers are our example, the rules come from Wolt's own page [14]. Go through the steps and see who sends money or data to whom.
Sales data is shared
What does finmid earn from one loan?
Change the amount, the fee rate and how many loans a restaurant takes a year. The split is our estimate: whoever puts in the money takes the biggest share, and finmid and the platform share the rest.
| Fee the restaurant pays | €1,440 | |
|---|---|---|
| Capital | 60% | €864 |
| Platform | 20% | €288 |
| finmid | 20% | €288 |
| finmid's yearly earnings from one restaurant | €432 |
This is an estimate. The fee range comes from the UK cash advance market [17] and the amount range from Wolt [14]. We worked out the split ourselves: we assumed about €4 of every €100 lent is not repaid and investors expect 10% a year. On that basis, more than half of the capital share goes to covering unpaid loans. The 1.5 loans a year assumption rests on renewal offers appearing once 60% is repaid and 85% of businesses coming back [16] [30]. The costs of the risk model, compliance and servicing are not taken off.
Nine boxes, two clients
The canvas fills as you read. Dark boxes are where this company is strong, white boxes are the parts that look like other companies in the sector. Here we merged two boxes.
Who is the client? There are two. The first is the platform that signs the contract: food delivery apps, payment terminal firms, marketplaces, ride hailing apps. Wolt, Glovo, Bolt, myPOS and Skroutz are a few of them [7] [10] [16]. The second is the business that takes the loan. That is who pays the fee. The platform pays finmid no fee [3] and earns a share of every loan [2]. myPOS alone has more than 90,000 businesses in Italy [11]. For vehicle loans, the clients are fleet owners with 2 to 50 cars and drivers with a single car [3].
What do they sell? To the platform, they sell the ability to lend to its own clients without becoming a bank [7]. The loan opens in the platform's app, under the platform's name. Licensing, credit decisions and collections stay with finmid, and the platform earns a share of every euro funded [2]. For the business the promise is simpler: no forms, money the next day [4]. From the first data point to the money landing, the restaurant fills in not a single document. Even its identity details only go out after it accepts the offer, from the platform's own system [31]. For vehicle loans, it is a car of their own for drivers who cannot get a bank loan.
How do they reach clients? Through the platform's app. The offer shows up in the app the business already uses every day to check its orders. More than 37,000 offers have been shown in Germany and more than 88,000 in Spain [1]. Communication runs the same way: reminder emails, invoices and reports go out under the platform's name [4].Channel and client relationship both run in the same app, so we show them in one box.
Revenue comes from the one time fixed fee the business pays for the loan [14]. The fee is split between whoever put in the money, the platform and finmid [6]. The biggest item is cash advances on food platforms. This is the box you guessed above, and the example showed how it is split.
Who do they work with? Two kinds of partner. The first are the platforms that bring the clients: Wolt, Glovo, Bolt, Lieferando, myPOS, efood, allO [1] [10] [11] [13] [16]. The second put in the money. It can come from three places: the platform itself, the platform's bank or finmid's financing partners [16]. On Wolt the loan is arranged by SIA Ascend Finance, finmid's licensed subsidiary in Latvia, and the lenders are investors it finds [14] [15] [32]. So the crowdfunding licence also sits inside the finmid group. Skroutz lends its own money to about 9,000 sellers and leaves the decisions and loan management to finmid [16]. Part of the new round goes into this infrastructure for raising money from different sources [8].
What are their most valuable resources? First, the credit decision engine. finmid knows how businesses on food and mobility platforms earn and when they need money. It looks at live sales instead of a credit score, sets the price by risk and offers the business the amount it needs at the right time [1]. Rivals have a similar engine [24]. What sets finmid apart is offering this engine together with three things in a single integration: the rules of 30 countries [16], money from different sources [16] and collection through the platform's payment system [14]. The platform does not have to build any of these itself.
The daily work is classic lending: knowing the business, making the credit decision, tracking repayments, collecting [3]. The difference is in two places. Decisions are made on live sales data, and the whole process runs inside the platform's app.
How is it different from rivals?
We compared finmid with three companies doing the same job. Each figure is the latest the company has shared, so they are not from the same year.
| finmid | YouLend | Liberis | Banxware | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where | finmid · 30 European markets [16] | YouLend · UK, US, and in Europe mostly Germany [21] | Liberis · UK and 10 European countries through myPOS [22] | Banxware · Germany and the Netherlands [23] |
| Notable partners | finmid · Wolt, Glovo, Bolt, myPOS Italy, Skroutz | YouLend · eBay, Shopify, Qonto, SumUp, Tide [21] | Liberis · myPOS [22] | Banxware · Lieferando, Qonto, SumUp, Payone [23] |
| Offer | finmid · Binding pre approved only [19] | YouLend · Both pre approved and pre qualified [24] | Liberis · Revenue based finance [22] | Banxware · In platform business loans [23] |
| Size | finmid · More than €4 billion in offers [16] | YouLend · More than 370,000 businesses, about $230 million revenue [20] | Liberis · More than $1 billion funded [22] | Banxware · 30 platforms [23] |
Our review shows two differences. The first is reach. A single integration opens 30 markets, while rivals focus on a few countries. For a platform working in 20 markets like Wolt, that is a real convenience [4]. The second is specialisation. finmid went deep in food platforms and, with the same engine, started lending to Bolt fleets for their cars [7].
On two points the difference is small. YouLend gives pre approved offers too [24]. Wide reach does not tie a platform to finmid either. myPOS works with finmid in Italy and with Liberis and YouLend in other countries [11] [20] [22]. Both YouLend and Banxware lend to Lieferando's restaurants [12] [23]. Platforms can choose their provider country by country.
Which move does the model need most?
finmid's model rests on three moves. Pull one out: see which boxes empty on the canvas and how the radar shrinks. You can put it back and try another.
Pull a block
Which link do you think is weakest?
finmid's signal map
The fee model is simple. Since someone else usually puts in the money, finmid's share per loan is small and profit depends on volume. On our estimate, a few hundred euros per loan.
A clear promise to the platform: lend to your clients without becoming a bank. For the business, no forms and money the next day.
The strongest side. Every new platform brings thousands of businesses at once, and the offer shows up in an app the business already uses.
The founders come from N26 and know how to work with large companies. The team does not stand out as a strength of the model.
Rivals have a similar engine. What sets finmid apart is offering it with the rules of 30 countries, different capital sources and collection through the platform, in a single integration.
Competition in this business is tough. The same platform can work with different lending partners in different countries.
That makes it essential to stand out, go deeper and do some things much better than rivals. Growing in this model takes capital, and finding that capital is not always easy. Being able to raise money steadily and at a good price could become a growth engine and a real difference in its own right.
The quality of credit decisions matters most to whoever puts in the money, because the risk sits with them. Even when a platform lends from its own funds, losses hit its profit directly. So the decision engine has to stay very good in every case.
The setup built with Skroutz is a brand new product. It could let finmid scale without needing its own capital. It is worth following to see the results.